Things and The Slow Neolithic The Middle PDF

Things and the Slow Neolithic: the Middle
Eastern Transformation
Ian Hodder
Journal of Archaeological Method

and Theory
ISSN 1072-5369
J Archaeol Method Theory

DOI 10.1007/s10816-017-9336-0
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Author's personal copy
J Archaeol Method Theory
DOI 10.1007/s10816-017-9336-0
Things and the Slow Neolithic: the Middle Eastern

Transformation
Ian Hodder 1
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017
Abstract This paper argues that the search for an overarching explanation for the
adoption of farming and settled life in the Middle East can be enhanced by a consid-
eration of the dependencies between humans and human-made things from the Late
Glacial Maximum onwards. Often not considered in discussions of the origins of
agriculture is the long process of human tooth size reduction that started in the Upper
Palaeolithic and can reasonably be related to the increased use of grinding stones that
created softer and more nutrient-rich plant foods. A consideration of the use of
groundstone tools through the Epipalaeolithic and into the Neolithic shows that they
were entangled with hearths, ovens, houses and settlements, exchange relations and
notions of ownership. The practicalities of processing plants drew humans into path-
ways that led to intensification, population increase, sedentism and domestication.
Much the same can be said for other human-made things such as sickles, storage bins,
domestic animal dung and refuse. The dialectical tensions between human-thing
dependence and dependency generated the movement towards Neolithicization.
Human-thing dependence (involving human dependence on things, thing dependence
on humans and thing dependence on other things) afforded opportunities towards
which humans (always already in a given state of entanglement) were drawn in order
to solve problems. But this dependence also involved dependency, limitation and
constraint, leading for example to increases in labour. In order to provide that labour
or in other ways to deal with the demands of things and their entanglements with other
humans and things, humans made further use of the affordances of things. There was
thus a generative spiral leading to sedentism and domestication.
Keywords Neolithic . Middle East . Entanglement . Things . Groundstone
* Ian Hodder
ihodder@stanford.edu
1
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Hodder
It is remarkable that despite many decades of research there remains little consensus
about the causes of the agricultural revolution in the Middle East. Many assume that
climate played a role, despite the fact the specific causal connections have been difficult
to tie down. As Maher et al. (2012, 70) put it, there is little direct correlation between
climatic events and the cultural changes they are purported to have caused. In a recent
volume discussing the Natufian in the Levant (Bar-Yosef and Valla 2013), many
contributors question the link between cultural and economic change and the
Younger Dryas (e.g. Ashkenazi 2013, 317; Henry 2013; Napierala et al. 2013, 7980;
Richter and Maher 2013, 4434). Other commonly identified causes are population
increase and a general directionality towards intensification. But there is little evidence
for population pressure as a cause (Zeder and Smith 2009), with some claims in the
Levant that population declines prior to farming (Bocquet-Appel 2009; Bowles and
Choi 2013). In any case, populations and intensification do not increase by themselves;
we would need to be able to explain why they increased before accepting them as
explanations for sedentism and domestication. Arbuckle (2015) has very effectively
shown that resource depletion is not a trans-regional causal factor with respect to animal
domestication in the Middle East. Other processes such as competitive feasting (Hayden
1990; Bender 1978) have proved difficult to identify (Kuijt 2009; Smith 2001a, 2001b;
Zeder and Smith 2009), and even general concepts such as diet breadth models are
proving increasingly elusive (Arbuckle 2015; Conrad et al. 2013, 13; Gilead 1991;
Zeder and Smith 2009, 684).
At least some of the reasons for this lack of consensus may lie in two factors,
regional diversity and the very long time spans involved. As regards regional diversity,
many researchers now argue for a polycentric process (Gebel 2004). For example,
each region in the Near East needs to be examined in its own right rather than
projecting models from one region across the entire Levant (Conrad et al. 2013, 13).
There are regional differences in Epipalaeolithic settlement organization (e.g. Richter
and Maher 2013), human-animal relations (Arbuckle 2015), human-plant relations
(Willcox 2005), Natufian ornaments (Le Dossseur and Marchal 2013, 308) and burial
practices (Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris 2013). Given this diversity, it is perhaps
difficult to come to agreement about overall causes.
In addition, it is now common to argue that the process of Neolithicization was very
extended. The notion that genetic changes in plants could have occurred and been fixed
in populations quickly (e.g. Hillman and Davies 1990) has now largely been overturned
(Fuller 2007; Tanno and Willcox 2006). The Neolithic process was stretched out over
thousands of years. Maher et al. (2012, 69) note that many of the archaeological
features used to distinguish the Natufian and Neolithic represent long-term trends in
culture change, arguing that recent work has shown the earlier parts of the
Epipalaeolithic (from 23,000 cal BP) to be more dynamic and similar to the later phase,
the Natufian (see also Asouti and Fuller 2012). The term BNeolithization^ is ambig-
uous. The focus of research has been on the early Neolithic of southwest Asia,
(approximately 12,0008500 bp), but the complex process equally involves the pre-
ceding Epipalaeolithic period (from at least 22,000 bp) and continues through the later
Neolithic and beyond (Sterelny and Watkins 2015, 673). Zeder (2009) and
ilingirolu (2005) unpack the various components of Childes package of changes
that constitute the Neolithic Revolution and find that they are spread out over time, with
some, such as groundstone, starting 12,00014,000 years before fully developed
Things and the Slow Neolithic: the Middle Eastern Transformation
farming in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). Zeder points out that the agricultural
changes are late in a long process. Childe (1951, 87) did in fact see that the Neolithic
revolution was the climax of a long process (see also Smith 2001a) although the
evidence available at the time did not indicate how very long that process indeed was.
While rates of change seem to increase into the later Neolithic, the pace of change in the
Epipalaeolithic is comparatively slow.
Perhaps partly because the process was so drawn out and locally variable,
there remains very little agreement about the causes of these shifts in the Middle
East. After all, if the changes described in Childes package took place between
22,000 and 6000 BC, then it is difficult to see how specific events such as
climate change could have been causal. The protracted process of technological
and agricultural evolution calls into question hypotheses that the transition to
agriculture was caused by any particular climatic event (Maeda et al. 2016,
226). And if the process of change followed different pathways in different parts
of the Levant, northern Mesopotamia, the Zagros and Anatolia, the search for
single causes is bound to be difficult.
In the debates regarding the origins of farming and settled life in the Middle East, it is
taken for granted that the dialogue should be in terms of human-environment interac-
tions. Most accounts discuss resources, pressures on environments and stress in food
provisioning. And indeed, there seems to be much variability through time in how these
factors played out. Such discussions ignore the active role of things. Childes package
consists of many things like groundstones, weaving equipment, pottery, settlements,
ritual centres, storage systems and domesticated plants and animals. Today, we might
add other components such as sickles and the processing and burial of human skeletal
elements within settlements. I will suggest in this paper that by focusing on things and
their affordances and entanglements, we can come to a better general explanation of how
humans got drawn along the pathway of increased agricultural intensification (see also
Fuller et al. 2010, 2016). I will argue that a focus on things allows for a general
understanding despite the local variation. I will also accept that it was initially a very
slow process, internally generated. Although climate change may have caused some-
what of a bumpy ride (Belfer-Cohen and Bar-Yosef 2000), and environmental factors
had undoubted influence at various points along the way, it was internally generated
interactions between humans and human-made things that led to what we call the
origins of agriculture. The notion of a general explanation for the Middle East Neolithic
may be less of a mirage than the evidence for regional variation and long time spans
suggests, but only if we take human-thing interactions more seriously.
There are of course other general approaches that purport to include the ways in
which things, in the form of human interventions in environments, and their engineer-
ing of ecosystems, came to play an active role in the evolutionary processes linked to
the origins of farming and settled life. Niche Construction Theory explores the ways in
which humans construct niches (of cultural and ecological information, but also
physically changed habitats) that can change selection pressures on themselves as well
as other organisms (Laland 2008; Laland and OBrien 2010; Odling-Smee et al. 2003;
Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011; Smith 2007; Sterelny and Watkins 2015; Zeder and
Smith 2009). According to Smith (2012), Niche Construction Theory provides an
intermediary level of theory between macro-evolutionary theory (that explains change
in terms of factors such as population increase and climate change) and the detailed
Hodder
processes of the domestication of particular species. It explains the how of the

adoption of farming by showing that interventions in the environment can lead to
domestication and stable settlements. In that sense, it contributes to a very general
explanatory framework that does pay attention to things. On the other hand, there are
two very distinct differences between entanglement theory (Hodder 2012, 2016) and
Niche Construction Theory as applied to humans and things. The first is that in Niche
Construction Theory things are seen as niches, or environments, actively constructed by
humans yes, but backdrops for the selection of traits. Certainly, the theory explores
complex and dynamic relations between humans and environments (Boivin et al. 2016;
Erlandson et al. 2016) and allows study of anthropogenic transformations that have
created novel ecosystems. But the theory derives from evolutionary and ecological
theories rather than from theories about things and the ways in which the complex
interactions of things can draw humans down pathways through dialectical processes.
The second difference is that, precisely because of the first difference and the lack of an
internal generative mechanism outside the long slow processes of evolutionary theory,
Niche Construction Theorists get drawn into unwarranted universalist statements that
assume a teleological progress towards the betterment of the human condition. For
example, Smith (2012, 260) argues that Niche Construction Theory can explain initial
domestication not as an adaptive response to an adverse environmental shift or to human
population growth or packing but rather as the result of deliberate human enhancement
of resource-rich environments. This notion of humans consciously enhancing the
density and productivity of desired resources is repeated by Zeder and Smith (2009,
688) and Zeder (2016). It is precisely this deliberate human enhancement that needs to
be explained rather than assumed. I will return at the conclusion of this paper to the
differences between entanglement theory and Niche Construction Theory.
Tying Bodies and Grinding Stones Together
One strand of evidence that suggests that the processes of the Neolithic transformation
were long and slow is genetic and phenotypic change in humans. Bioarchaeological
data demonstrate directional changes that include the Neolithic but extend back into
Epipalaeolithic and earlier times. For example, decreases in human stature, tooth size
and sexual dimorphism have been identified from the Upper Palaeolithic through the
adoption of farming in the Middle East and other parts of the world based on skeletal
evidence from archaeological contexts (Boix and Rosenbluth 2014; Frayer 1980;
Formicola and Giannecchini 1999; Hermanussen 2003; Ruff 2002; Smith and
Horwitz 2007).
Brace et al. (1987) demonstrate that from approximately 100,000 years ago to the
end of the Pleistocene, human tooth size reduced at a rate of 1% every 2000 years.
After 10,000 BC, the rate of dental reduction doubled. Ruff (2002, 216) states that there
is a decline in average body mass beginning about 50,000 years ago. Smith and
Horwitz (2007) note that in the southern Levant, a reduction in stature and tooth size
can be seen from the Kebaran onwards. Holt and Formicola (2008, 70) find that Upper
Palaeolithic groups living before and after the Last Glacial Maximum differ signifi-
cantly in craniofacial dimensions, stature, robusticity, and body proportions. While
paleopathological and stable isotope data suggest good health status throughout the
Upper Paleolithic, some stress indicators point to a slight decline in quality of life in
Late Upper Palaeolithic populations.
In a review, Larsen (1995, 191) finds evidence for stature reduction with agriculture
in selected settings globally, but the association is not universal, especially in
pre-historic North America. He finds that reduction in tooth size is a stronger overall
trend. Mummert et al. (2011) also review recent research. The results of their review of
literature about the effects of adoption of agriculture in all regions of the globe is that
while there are some counter-examples, there is clear support for the notion that there is
an overall trend for reduced stature (ibid., 297).
These shifts are seen as the result of both genetic and environmental factors, primarily
having to do with nutrition. For example, Boix and Rosenbluth (2014, 1) argue that human
height varies both by genetic factors outside the reach of short-run environmental interven-
tion and by levels of nutrition during the periods of pre- and adolescent growth spurts.
Many authors suggest that the overall decrease in stature results from declines in nutrition
from the Palaeolithic into the Neolithic (e.g. Formicola and Giannecchini 1999). The latter
argue that the disappearance of megafauna and the focus on a more diverse diet plus
population increase and less availability of protein are the causes of the decline (see also
Hermanussen 2003). They also say that increased territorialization and cultural fragmenta-
tion after the Last Glacial Maximum created less gene flow, and they claim that inbreeding is
associated with loss of stature. Thus overall, Formicola and Giannecchini argue that the
decrease in stature is the result of less protein and inbreeding. Others (Mummert et al. 2011)
also see increased disease in agricultural societies playing a role. For Ruff (2002), a key
factor is that technological improvements decreased the selective advantage of a larger body
(which is also metabolically expensive to maintain).
Brace et al. (1987) argue that the decrease in tooth size in the later Pleistocene is the
result of the use of pounding, grinding and milling tools, while the increased rate of
dental reduction after 10,000 BP they see as the result of the introduction of pottery.
These food preparation and cooking tools are seen as producing softer foods requiring
less chewing. Cooking lessened the intensity of selection for maintaining tooth size.
While Larsen (1995) sees the overall cause as probably related to nutrition, he also cites
other possible causes such as increasing sedentism and population density, migration
and gene flow, craniofacial or body size variation and dental disease.
An important point made by Ruff (2002, 2167) is that in many parts of the world
body size reduction occurred a long time prior to full food production (and even in
places such as Australia where agricultural food production did not emerge). Smith and
Horwitz (2007, 218) show that for the southern Levant the trends towards skeletal
gracilization and reduction in tooth size began in the Upper Palaeolithic, long before the
adoption of agriculture. The global evidence for decreased sexual dimorphism as
argued by, for example, Frayer (1980) and Hermanussen (2003), is in fact patchy,
and there is no evidence for a reduction in the Middle East (see Holden and Mace
1999). The changes towards gracilization and tooth size reduction can be related to
changes in nutrition, including the decline in large game, and changes in technology. It
is thus of interest that changes in stature and tooth size can be most readily identified
from the Last Glacial Maximum, when grinding stones also appear in the Middle East.
It is possible, indeed likely, that different causal processes were at work at different
times in the long process of reduction in stature and tooth size. Mathieson et al. (2015)
studied the ancient DNA from 230 West Eurasians who lived between 6500 BC and 300
Hodder
BC and found selection for reduced height when comparing Anatolian Neolithic to
Iberian Neolithic and Chalcolithic samples. Similar studies are needed for earlier time
periods, but it remains likely that reduced stature and tooth size in the Pleistocene and
early Holocene are the results of complex bio-socio-material processes. Most commen-
tators, however, argue that food processing technologies played a role, at least in the
later phases of the reduction. Of the various components of Childes Neolithic package,
it is grinding stones that are the first to appear (Zeder 2009 and see below). It is of
interest that they appear during the severe conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum, so
that it is possible to argue, along with many of the authors referred to at the start of this
paper, that the Neolithic to some degree began at this point. Things (grinding stones),
biological change in humans, climate and plant processing were all dependent on each
other in complex bio-socio-material processes.
By looking at grinding stones and humans more carefully, we can see the close ties
that underlay these processes. Small hammerstones and grinding slabs occur at some
sites in the Upper Palaeolithic Levant from 45,000 to 20,000 BP (Wright 1994). It is not
until the Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran between 20,000 and 12,800 BP that mortars
are found, some too large for transportation. Wright suggests that the stone mortars
were probably used for de-husking cereals along with wooden pounders. In the Early
Natufian between 12,800 and 11,500 BP, there is a major increase in the number of
groundstone tools in which mortars and pestles dominate. In the Late Natufian, 11,500
10,300 BP, there is a slight increase in grinding slabs, and by the Pre-pottery Neolithic A
(PPNA), grinding slabs or querns have increased significantly over mortars and pestles.
Rock-cut mortars appear in the later Epipalaeolithic.
Karen Wright has explored the multiple interactions of groundstone through the
Epipalaeolithic and into the Neolithic. She argues (Wright 1991) that groundstone tools
may have been used for a great variety of processing including nuts, chenopods, legumes and
roots. Pounding can help in de-husking, and grinding can expose more surface area of foods
and thus permit more nutrients to be absorbed by the body; more nutrients can be obtained
from a given amount of plants (Wright 1991). Pounding and grinding remove fibre from
plants, reduce particle size, aid detoxification and add or remove nutrients (Wright 1994,
242). Bar-Oz and Dayan (2003) suggest that groundstone tools may also have been used to
grind bones for fat extraction, and there is much evidence that they were used for ochre
grinding (e.g. Dubreuil and Grosman 2013). (For other work on the bioavailabilty of foods,
see Crittenden and Schnorr 2017, Wollstonecroft et al. 2008 and Wollstonecroft 2011.)
It is thus likely that increased use of grinding stones was closely linked to a
reduction in tooth size as humans were able to consume softer foods. It is as if humans
exported their tooth grinding functions to stones. The obtaining of nutrients more
efficiently from plants may also have decreased the selective advantage of a larger
body that was metabolically expensive to maintain.
But there was much else involved in the tangled relations between bodies, grinding
stones and plantsin particular the hearth. Many plants can be processed more easily if
parched, and cooking is a key part of making grasses edible. Wright (2004) argues that
the tools and installations used in cooking were also probably used in other tasks such
as toolmaking and creating warmth and light. Through time, storage became involved
as well. Husked grasses and cereals are ideal for storage, as the food is stored in
ready-made packages. It makes sense therefore to store grasses and cereals near houses
and to process them for eating (via pounding, cooking, grinding. etc.) as needed. Given
the multiple functions of grinding stones, it would have made sense to bring all the
foods and the food processing to the objects (the groundstone implements) rather than
the other way round. So, again, the later stages of plant processing are associated with
the house or settlement. And once investments have been made in hearths, houses,
grinding stones and other immovables, it makes sense to keep returning to the same
place, and ultimately to become fully sedentary. We begin to see that sedentism can be
produced simply as an unintended product of the practicalities of processing grasses
and plants.
We can see these entanglements between humans, grinding stones, plants, hearths
and settlements in the archaeological record, beginning at least by 20,000 BP. As Zeder
and Smith (2009, 685) note, a long-term explanatory narrative for the Neolithic could
begin at the height of the Late Glacial Maximum in the Near East, when people
congregated, perhaps on a year-round basis, in sheltered resource-rich areas like
Ohalo II, where they exploited a rich array of plant and animals species. One hundred
forty-two species of plant were made use of at Ohalo II at 19,000 BP (Nadel 1990, 2004;
Maher et al. 2012, 78). Kislev et al. (1992) provide a table of all the edible plant seeds
and fruits at the site, and they explore their complex overlapping seasonalities. Weiss
et al. (2004a, b) examine the great diversity of plant species exploited at Ohalo II,
without cereals or other crop founders being dominant. They argue that within all this,
small-grained grasses were a staple food. Ohalo II also had specialized food processing
features closely related to the house (Asouti and Fuller 2012): an indoors large flat
basalt stone, supported by small pebbles, was associated with large quantities of
charred barley and grass seeds as well as several species of plants with ethnographically
reported medicinal uses (Weiss et al. 2008), and an outdoors stone-paved hearth that
was covered with ash and charcoal that might have been used as a baking installation.
There were also indicators of multi-seasonal hunting, fishing and plant gathering and
flint, bone, wood and groundstone concentrations, as well as evidence of elaborate
symbolic behaviours (Kislev et al. 1992). The importance of continuity in place is seen
in the relaying of hut floors at least three times indicating prolonged maintenance of
these structures (Maher et al. 2012, 73). There is also burial in the settlement at Ohalo
II, again indicating an association between humans and place. Ohalo II can be read as
indicating a complex set of entanglements that had a practical logic tending towards
sedentary life.
Wright (2004) describes the Kebaran site of Ein Gev I (16,000 BP) in Israel in similar
terms. Here, there is evidence of a simple hearth in the middle of a hut floor and two
pestles and a large stone mortar close by, evidently cached there as site furniture. The
hut was dug into the slope of a sandy hill. The hut was periodically occupied as
indicated by six successive layers which accumulated within it (Arensburg and
Bar-Yosef 1973, 201). Beneath one of the floors was the burial of a woman, all
indicating place making. The sounding through phase A at Jilat 6 (dated to 15,500 -
16,700 BP) revealed three superimposed artifically laid surfaces (one of compacted silt
and two of ochre) which are thought from their well defined, lipped-up edges to be the
floors of a structure (Garrard and Byrd 1992, 60). There are also basalt and limestone
grinding stones from this site. Garrard and Byrd note that the finding of burials at
Kharaneh IV suggests that such localities may have had some social or territorial
significance (ibid.).
Hodder
The wide range of plants exploited at Epipalaeolithic Abu Hureyra 1A (11,500 BP)
has been described by Hillman (2000). In the charred plant remains, Hillman identified
142 species and isolated at least another 50 types that could not be precisely identified
(ibid., 369). Hillman discussed a few of the major plant foods and how they would have
been harvested and processed, basing his account on the plants found, on ethnographic
parallels and on experimental work. The main processes have been extracted from his
account and placed in Fig. 1 for a few species. Hillman emphasized that his account
provides only a snapshot of the many uses of plants at Abu Hureyra, including their use
for flavourings, medicines, dyes and hallucinogens (ibid., 366). Nevertheless, Fig. 1
indicates that many plants were processed in ways that involved grinding, pounding,
parching, heating and sieving, and these tasks would have involved a wide range of
tools from stone and wood mortars and querns to sickles, beaters, baskets, hearths,
ovens and sieves. This equipmental totality (a phrase taken from Heidegger 1973)
would to some degree have been portable although, as noted above, by the late
Epipalaeolithic many grinding stones had become not easily portable. But the
co-presence at Abu Hureyra of so much processing of plants would have led to much
multi-tasking in the use of tools. It would have made sense to re-use the same tool for
multiple purposes; to use the same grinding stones, hearths and ovens for multiple
tasks; to share in the investment in tools and to bring the plants to the tools rather than
the other way round, at least in the case of items of equipment such as hearths, ovens
and grinding stones that were less moveable and in which greater investments had been
made. In so doing, the tools acted as focal points, encouraging repeated occupation at
the same locale. The multi-tasking and the relative immobility of some things created
stable points around which people gathered and shared. The fixity of tools to place does
not by itself create sedentary life. For example, it might be thought that a clear example
of a tie to place was provided by the rock-cut mortars in the later Epipalaeolithic (Eitam
2009; Grosman and Goren-Inbar 2007; Nadel and Rosenberg 2013). These again
appear to have been multi-functional (including spiritual functionsLengyel et al.
2013), and they tied people very directly to place, but they could also be returned to
harves ng dehusking consuming
wheat bea ng pestle sieving (wheat) roas ng, boiling,

wild and upr ng drying lashing parching and crushing, grinding,
rye sickles wheats mortar winnowing (rye) baking
feather grass hand grabbing singeing rubbing winnowing as above
nutlets of plucking or drying rubbing/ winnowing roas ng, grinding

club rush stripping threshing into flour
nutlets of
Euphrates gathering singeing rubbing winnowing roasting, grinding
knotgrass into flour
fermenta on
almond coll on crack and remove shells grinding, leaching
roas ng
acorns coll on crack and remove shells drying roas ng, grinding,
leaching
Fig. 1 A few of the major plant foods at Abu Hureyra 1A and their processing as reconstructed by Gordon
Hillman (2000)
seasonally. It is not just that things tied humans to place, but more that the multi-
purposing of many tools that became relatively immobile created a tendency towards
sedentism. A tension emerged between plant processing and mobility, caused by things
such as grinding stones and hearths; humans and things got drawn into a more
sedentary lifestyle.
The Natufian in the southern Levant sees a major increase in the frequency of
grinding stones at sites (Wright 1994). Grinding stones are found in and around houses,
and there is much evidence for the overall entanglements of grinding stones with
hearths, houses, plants, continuous settlement and burial. In the larger sites, houses
were repetitively built on earlier houses, often linked to burial (Hodder 2007). At
Natufian Eynan, Samuelian (2013, 181) finds the habitual repetition of activities in
certain areas. Bocquentin et al. (2013, 185) also note examples in the Natufian of
rebuilding on top of previous structures, and of inter-digitation between houses and
burials. In addition, grinding stones themselves may have become involved in history
making. For example, at Hilazon Tachtit (Dubreuil and Grosman 2013, 537) most
macrolithic implements found in burial contexts are broken. The Bkilling^ or intentional
breakage of grinding stones suggests a concern about temporal links and continuities.
As a final example, Atalay and Hastorf (2006) detail the food practices at
atalhyk, dividing them into production and procurement, processing, storage,
cooking, presentation and eating, and they then describe all the activities and tools
involved in those activities. I have summarized their account in Table 1. While I have
not drawn numerous connecting lines across this table, it is possible to glimpse the
immense networks of activities and tools that are inter-connected and tied up in each
other. For example, very many of the tools reappear in relation to different activities, as
is the case for baskets and other containers, cutting tools, hearths and ovens and mats.
And the activities have to be ordered in relation to each other in sequence, or they have
to inter-digitate and wait for each other. Thus, grinding and pounding of grains have to
take place after threshing and winnowing, or grinding stones can only be used for one
activity at a time, or pots being used for extracting grease from meat cannot be used for
keeping water or cooking cereal gruel. So everything is entangled in everything else.
While this example takes us far forward into the seventh millennium BC, it offers a
glimpse into the extreme complexities of inter-linked operational sequences and tools
that had emerged by that time.
So we see that humans depended on grinding stones throughout the Epipalaeolithic
and Neolithicthey were entangled with them in a direct bodily way, leading to
changing diets and softer foods and changes in tooth size. And grinding stones drew
humans into the hard work of plant processing, of making grinding stones and of
procuring the stone. This was a co-dependency that drew humans into greater labour. It
also started to tie humans down into a more sedentary lifestyle and a greater commit-
ment to place as seen in burials occurring increasingly in settlements. Grinding stones
and the practicalities of plant processing and multi-tasking increasingly tied humans to
places, houses and burials. In their discussion of the entanglements of plant use in the
Middle East, Fuller et al. (2016) describe how grinding stones and ovens created a
cultural tradition focused on the house and settlement.
The dialectical tensions within these bio-socio-material entanglements led to change.
We have seen the gradual increase in the frequency of grinding stones on archaeolog-
ical sites from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (Wright 1994) as well
Hodder
Table 1 Activities and tools involved in food at atalhyk. Derived from Atalay and Hastorf (2006)
Production and procurement

Activities: plant gathering, tending plants, planting, harvesting and transporting plants, hunting, fishing,
animal gathering, tending animals, trapping
Tools: baskets, cutting blades, beaters, boats, hooks or nets, digging tools, projectiles, pens, axes, grinding
stones, reeds, animal dung, poles
Processing for storage
Activities: drying, butchering, smoking, salting, parching, toasting, picking, threshing, winnowing, sieving,
hand cleaning of grains
Tools: racks, cutting tools, fires, skins, pits, salt, clay balls, trays, hearths, bins, ovens, skin sieves, cloth,
string, containers including pottery, flat stones, grinding stones
Storage
Activities: storage of plants, meat, grease, fats in ceilings in rooms, and in skins, bags, bins and baskets and
pottery on ledges or on floors or on roofs, and in pits
Tools: bins, bags, baskets, pottery, pits, skins, plaster, sewing equipment (bone tools etc), mats, amulets,
figurines, digging tools
Processing for consumption
Activities: threshing, winnowing, sieving, grinding and pounding, leaching, bone grease extraction, plant
grease extraction, butchering, brewing, fermenting, rotting
Tools: baskets, stone and wood mortars and pestles, grinding stones, pits, skins, bins, pottery and other
containers, obsidian and scrapers, skin sieves
Cooking
Activities: boiling (direct and indirect heat), grilling, parching, toasting, roasting, baking
Tools: pottery, clay balls, baskets, skins, hearths, ovens, pits, wooden stirring utensils
Presentation
Tools: serving vessels of woods (15 different shapes found by Mellaart), bone, stone, basketry and later
pottery, mats, hide containers, woven cloth, spoons, forks and spatula made of bone or antler
as a shift to greater use of grinding slabs and querns. Regarding plants, Weiss et al.
(2004a) show a pattern over time from Ohalo II of lesser diversity, fewer small-grained
grasses and more cereals through time into the PPNB (see also Willcox et al. 2008).
Asouti and Fairbairn (2010, 167) argue that in Upper Palaeolithic, Natufian and PPNA
sites, small-seeded grasses and legumes predominate. The founder seed crops played a
small partemmer, einkorn, barley, lentil, chickpea, pea and flax. There is a lot of
regional variability in what plant species are concentrated onsome emphasize oil-rich
seeds, others starch-rich seeds, sites in northern Syria exploit docks/knotweeds and
various crucifers, others focus on arboreal species. Asouti and Fuller (2012) argue that
Epipalaeolithic plant management practices involved a diverse array of foraging
adaptations to locally fluctuating plant resources. Cereals were not the focus of plant
gathering and are also unlikely to have been cultivated. This is because of the high
labour costs involved in field preparation and crop processing, and the delayed
economic returns.
So what was pushing this process of increased use of wild cereals along? We do not
need population increase or some mystical move towards intensification to explain this.
All we need is the dialectical tension between dependence and dependency in the
relations between humans and things (Hodder 2012, 2016). As regards human depen-
dence on plants, Weiss et al. (2004a) imply that because cereals have large grains, more
food product is gained from a unit of processing labour, even if there are other
entrapping entanglements associated with cereals (such as threshing and
winnowingFuller et al. 2016). But the dependence also involves dependency (that
is constraint and limitation). As well as the additional work of threshing and
winnowing, the grinding of cereals for consumption involves arduous work. As
Wright (1994, 257) notes, the arduous nature of wild-cereal processing has been
widely underestimated. Wild cereals may not have been Battractive^ plant foods for
Levantine foragers. An internally generated process thus emerges. Wild cereals are
attractive because they provide a greater return for the investment of energy and
because they are naturally well packaged in husks for storage. But they are harder to
work, so humans invest in tools and technologies to make the processing easier. But the
tools and the processing involve all sorts of additional entanglements that lead to
greater demands on humans such that they need greater returns. They thus become
yet more dependent on cereals. There is thus an internally generated process produced
by the dialectic of human-thing dependence and dependency.
There were yet other ways in which grinding stones created relations of dependence
and dependency between humans and things. Other entanglements of grinding stones
included the sourcing of suitable material. For example at the Early Natufian site of
Wadi Hammeh 27 (dated to 12,500 BC12,000 BC), nearby basaltic outcrops were
ignored in favour of more distant ones. This is an intriguing pattern, which may relate
to the embeddedness of basaltic rock acquisition within more complex webs of social
relations (Edwards et al. 2013, 325). Humans depended on the sourcing of stone for
grinding stones, but they were thus drawn into exchange relations that were complex
and needed sustaining.
The entanglements that were being created with grinding stones would also have
involved other more abstract concepts. It is necessary to be careful in inferring notions
of property and ownership as these vary very much cross-culturally (Strathern 1999).
But it is often the case that work with objects leads to identification and ownership.
Barnard and Woodburn (1988, 24) argue that work transforms material things into
property. It is thus likely that as humans in the Epipalaeolithic invested labour in, for
example, groundstone and the processing of food with groundstones, these objects
would have become identified with, and perhaps owned by, particular people (see
also Bowles and Choi 2013). It is of interest that in the Early and Middle
Epipalaeolithic, groundstone tools are found both in domestic and burial contexts.
The occurrence in graves suggests some form of identification. Thus, notions of
ownership, however loosely and carefully defined, are added to the entanglements
between humans and things. The dependence of humans on grinding stones and plant
processing may have led to some form of ownership that then created constraint and
dependency. Problems would have emerged in the sharing and distribution of labour
and products. Strong levelling mechanisms and sharing are evident in the storage of
grain in the PPNA (see below), but through time there is increasing evidence of
house-based storage. By the time of atalhyk, I have argued that there was an
aggressive egalitarianism in place in which there were strong tensions between
levelling mechanisms and house-based ownership of plant storage and grinding stone
equipment (Hodder 2014). Indeed, aggravating tensions between sharing and keeping
Hodder
may have become the main long-term legacy of the initial human dependence on
grinding stones for plant processing that emerged in the Last Glacial Maximum.
Examples of Other Things That Drew Humans Towards Settled

Agricultural Life
Sickles Another material thing that drew humans in particular directions is the
sickle, identified as chipped stone blades with evidence of gloss and striations
(Unger-Hamilton 1989). In a recent survey of the evidence for sickles in the
Neolithic of the Middle East, Maeda et al. (2016) note some types of sickle
appearing in the Levant by the Natufian, increasing in frequency into the PPNB.
Sickles thus appear well before the major increase of non-shattering forms of cereals
in the PPNB. It has long been assumed by archaeologists that harvesting methods
that retain the entire cereal ear, such as uprooting or cutting by sickle, will favour
the selection of non-shattering forms. However, Maeda et al. find very different
associations between sickles and non-shattering forms in the Levant, North
Mesopotamia, the Eastern Fertile Crescent and Cyprussuggesting different trajec-
tories to domestication. This variability supports the contention that sickles were not
necessary for non-shattering cereals to evolve, particularly when their evolution was
a slow, prolonged process. It is assumed that the use of sickle did not prevent the
evolution of non-shattering rachises but it did not prompt it either (Maeda et al.
2016, 234).
Sickles provide a good example of the ways in which humans become dependent on
things for one set of purposes that then get extended to other purposes. We should
regard sickles as having been developed as a cutting tool for raw materials such as reeds
and sedges for basketry, matting or thatch. The extensive use of grass culms, reeds and
sedges for such purposes, including for lining burials, has been inferred from phytolith
analyses at some Natufian sites. We suggest that sickles were later, over the course of
the PPNB, transferred to agricultural harvesting, in cultural evolutionary terms an
exaptation. (ibid.). The increased focus on plants for substantive roofing and
flooring and walling through the Natufian and into PPNA and PPNB and onwards
would have been supported by the human dependence on sickles. As the list of ways in
which sickles were used expanded, including for harvesting cereals, and as the number
of entanglements increased, so did humans become more entrapped in their use.
This notion of entrapment with regard to sickles and plant harvesting has been
explored by Maeda et al. (2016). The use of sickles makes it easier to harvest
non-shattering ears. But once harvested, the spikelets must be separated by threshing,
which is not necessary for gathered mature spikelets. Thus, humans using sickles get
drawn into additional labour investments, including sickle production and threshing.
There are other types of entanglement that emerge. For example, cultivated fields will
probably require some nutritional supplementation if they are to remain in use and
support larger-seeded, more erect and tightly spaced domesticated plants. Many other
factors are also involved, for example whether the cereals are cut wet or dry, how close
to the ground and how many strokes are needed (Unger-Hamilton 1989). There are
many cross entanglements that drew humans into increased labour and management
(Fuller et al. 2016) in a dialectical process.
Storage The storage bin is another example of a thing that drew humans in certain
directions. There is little convincing evidence of storage structures in the Natufian
(Kuijt 2009, 2011). In the PPNA, there are collective external storage silos, but also
perhaps small-scale storage in some rooms. The MPPNB has external and internal clay
storage bins, but storage becomes largely internal by Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
(LPPNB) and Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (PPNC). Kuijt (ibid.) provides examples of how
in the LPPNB there was a close association between food storage and food preparation.
For example, at atalhyk there is much evidence in side rooms of the storage of
glume wheats in the husk (Bogaard et al. 2009). The grains were taken out as needed
for pounding in mortars, often involving parching, and were made into gruels or ground
on flat slabs into flour, which could then be cooked in the hearths and ovens in the
southern parts of the main rooms.
One consequence of grain storage would have been the separation of grains from the
wild stock, thus assisting gradual genetic change (increasing grain size in the PPNA
and non-shattering forms in the PPNB) to get fixed in the cereal population. It is of
interest that the genetic changes occur in PPNA and PPNB when clear evidence of
storage emerges. But it is also of interest that decentralized storage occurs in PPNB at
the same time that morphological change towards tough rachis is first found in
numbers. In the communal stores found in the PPNA, there would have been pooling
of selected and non-selected traits. This would have happened less in separate,
house-based stores since not every household or cultivator would have followed
identical techniques, and some would have selected more for domestication traits
(Fuller 2007; Asouti and Fuller 2012; Maeda et al. 2016; Willcox and Stordeur 2012).
Another entrapping consequence of using storage bins concerns pests. The appear-
ance of the house mouse in Natufian contexts has been argued to indicate commensal-
ism between humans and mice (Tchernov 1984), and Weissbrod et al. (2013) have
provided a critical evaluation of this evidence showing that the frequencies found on
Natufian sites indicate an environment little disturbed by human activities (ibid., 711).
Jerf al Ahmar has evidence for the house mouse, and the mouse had been taken to
Cyprus on boats by the early PPNB (84008000 cal BC) (Vigne et al. 2012). The cat
appears in a burial on Cyprus by the Late PPNB in the eighth millennium cal BC (ibid.).
This implies that mice were probably an established part of human settlements and
storage. By at least the PPNC, a pest beetle, the granary weevil that seriously infests
cereal grains, has been identified at Atlit Yam in the Levant (Kislev et al. 2004). At
atalhyk in the seventh millennium, a whole ecology of mice and of carnivores such
as voles, weasels and other rodents has been identified, perhaps also preyed upon by the
dogs, foxes, wildcats, polecats and badgers found at the site. These animals also extend
into the symbolic and ritual sphere as indicated by weasel skulls placed in walls and
weasel scat placed on torsos in burials (Jenkins 2012).
These pests presumably would have created a motivation to experiment with and
decentralize storage. As noted above, the PPNA is associated with communal storage.
The effects of pests would thus have been on whole crops. Decentralized storage that
became dominant in the PPNB and later may have helped to control the build-up of
pests, allowing more individualized monitoring close to or in the house, and preventing
damage to whole crops. Storage bins are attractive to humans for a number of reasons,
and humans quickly became dependent on them, but the entangled effects were to
promote genetic change (and thus more arduous labour) and to cause the proliferation
Hodder
of pests that needed to be managed. It is possible to argue that the gradual move in the
Neolithic of the Middle East towards separate, house-based storage (Byrd 1994), and
perhaps ownership, was caused by a social drive towards intensification and hierarchy.
Rather than assuming such teleologies, it is argued here that the social processes can be
seen as the result of humans seeing the advantages of storage, but then having to deal
with the implications, often constraining and limiting. For example, dealing with the
pests associated with storage bins led to greater investment in monitoring separate bins,
the building of separate storage rooms and thus the need to depend yet further on
high-yielding plants and their storage. The social changes are produced within the
practices of human-thing entanglement rather than being sui generis.
Dung It is notable that the appearance of morphological change in cereals in the PPNB
and the greater dependence on cereals can be linked to the domestication of animals.
Indeed, Bogaard (2005) argues that arable farming and herding were tangled up in each
other in the European Neolithic and in the PPNB in the Middle East. BIntensive mixed
farming^ refers to intensive cultivation integrated with intensive livestock herding.
Crop cultivation in this system is relatively high-yielding due to high inputs of labour
(careful tillage, weeding, manuring, watering, etc.) and is small-scale, within the labour
capacity of a household. Animals are primarily kept for their meat, though milk and
wool/hair may also be used..Cultivation provides forage and fodder for livestock,
while livestock provide manure for cultivated plots and regulate crop growth (ibid.,
179). This entanglement of dependence between humans, animals and crops has
consequences that need management, including the separation of animals from fields
as the crops grow and ripen (Fuller et al. 2010, 16).
At atalhyk, there is much evidence from archaeobotanical and chemical analysis
of middens that dung was brought on site as a fuel, particularly associated with external
fire spots and hearths in open areas and yards rather than with internal hearths and
ovens (Bogaard et al. 2014; Shillito et al. 2013). While wood was also used as a fuel
(Asouti 2013), there was a heavy dependence on dung. Dung thus contributed to the
increasing array of activities that were undertaken by household units (both inside and
outside houses), but it also was related to an increased human dependence on sheep and
domestic cattle. Matthews and co-workers (2014) have argued indeed that the need for
dung fuel may have been a factor in the developments of closer relationships between
humans and animals.
Refuse Living in settled villages created refuse management problems. For example, in
Natufian sites, there is much build-up of refuse inside houses. Natufian foragers
frequently left large quantities of trash on their living surfaces and activity areas,
including inside dwellings (Marder et al. 2013, 521; see also Hardy-Smith and
Edwards 2004; Valla 1988). This caused a problem that had to be dealt with. One
solution (Smith 2007, 193) may have been that dogs were attracted to come into closer
contact with humans who tolerated their presence (and domestication) in consuming
midden refuse. But other solutions too were sought. In contrast to Natufian and earlier
sites, there is greater delineation of space in PPNA sites, and there is more evidence of
refuse management practices, with separate middens and more cleaning out of houses
on abandonment (Hardy-Smith and Edwards 2004; Kuijt and Goodale 2009). By the
time of atalhyk in the seventh millennium BC, the organization of refuse has
become a major concern with much evidence of in situ burning of organic matter, and
smothering of midden layers with ash and clays (Shillito et al. 2013), in order to
mitigate the effects of large amounts of human and other faecal material, rotting vegetal
matter and meat and bone. It is clear too that at atalhyk dogs were allowed on
middens (but not in houses) as indicated by faecal material and gnawed bones. Larsen
et al. (2015: 50) have shown that atalhyk residents enjoyed relatively normal
skeletal development and that the living conditions suggested by the archaeological
recordliving in close crowded conditionswere successfully mitigated. Zhou
(2016) points to the numerous layers of plaster on the walls of atalhyk houses
(Matthews 2005; Matthews et al. 2014), the careful replastering of floors after burial
beneath them, the assiduous separation of clean and dirty floors and the sweeping of
refuse into open areas or middens. He suggests that the marl clays used at atalhyk
on walls and floors, above burials and spread on middens were high in calcium
carbonate, CaCO3, which would have created an alkaline environment that inhibited
fungal, mould and bacterial growth. So issues regarding refuse that had built up in the
Epipalaeolithic were dealt with in the Neolithic by greater investments of labour and
social and material management. The dependence on middens led to complex
bio-socio-material entanglements into which humans were drawn.
Discussion and Conclusion
There are many other human entanglements with things that could have been discussed
in this account. For example, Asouti and Kabukcu (2014) argue that semi-arid decid-
uous oak woodlands should not be viewed as part of the natural vegetation of the
Irano-Anatolian region, but instead should be seen as one of the earliest anthropogenic
vegetation types in Southwest Asia. Drawing on anthracological, pollen and modern
vegetation data from central Anatolia, they show how low-diversity,
Quercus-dominated parklands were produced in the early Holocene as a result of
practices such as sheep herding that impacted on grass and forb vegetation, the
controlling of competing arboreal vegetation through woodcutting and woodland
management practices such as coppicing, pollarding and shredding. Once again,
humans were drawn into relationships with things (in this case trees and woodlands)
that required yet further human input.
The key idea in human-thing entanglement theory is that the dialectic between
dependence and dependency generates movement and change. In other words,
human-thing dependence (involving human dependence on things, thing dependence
on humans and thing dependence on other things) affords opportunities towards which
humans (always already in a given state of entanglement) are drawn in order to solve
problems. But this dependence also involves dependency, limitation and constraint,
often leading to increases in labour. In order to provide that labour or in other ways to
deal with the demands of things and their entanglements with other humans and things,
humans make further use of the affordances of things. There is thus an endless
generative spiral.
In the case of plants and grinding stones and human bodies, the evidence suggests
that wild cereals were attractive because they provided a greater return for the invest-
ment of energy and because they were naturally well packaged in husks for storage. But
Hodder
they are harder to work and demand more labour, so humans invested in tools and
technologies to make the processing easier. Over time, humans also increased group
size and population in order to provide the labour. But the tools and the technologies in
which humans invested also introduced additional entanglements that led to greater
demands on humans such that they needed greater returns. One response was to
become yet more dependent on cereals and to provide sufficient nutrients and for an
increasing population. There was thus an internally generated process produced by the
dialectic of dependence and dependency.
The generative process thus produced intensification and population increase. There
is no need for explanation to posit teleological drives of humans towards progress or
betterment or intensification or to assume that populations naturally rise; rather, these
characteristics of human societies are produced within entanglements. Grinding stones,
sickles, storage bins, the dung of domestic animals and refuse areas afforded opportu-
nities to humans in their activities, but in each case they also demanded more of
humans and thus drew humans along certain pathways. They were indeed a package
of things as Childe had surmised, inter-connected and tangled up in each other.
Grinding stones afforded more nutrients for humans and the softer foods led to reduced
tooth size, but they also drew humans towards a processing of plants that was linked to
other activities in the house and settlement. The plants and the difficulties processing
them led to connections between grinding stones and hearths and ovens, and later to
storage bins. The storage bins trapped humans into relations with mice and other pests
that had to be dealt with and managed, leading to the construction of separate bins
inside houses and the resulting problems of ownership. The increasing population and
group size led to the need to manage refuse. But refuse in the form of animal dung
enhanced the growth of crops and entrapped humans into intensive mixed farming in
which humans, plants and animals became locked in a co-dependency. Sickles that had
been developed for other purposes got dragooned into the service of plant harvesting,
and entanglements with animal dung and storage bins led to the emergence of
non-shattering cereals by the PPNB. By this time, as Dorian Fuller has so clearly
shown, humans had become trapped into increased labour for threshing and winnowing
and into the provision of nutrients for agricultural plots. From this point onwards, a
point of no return had been reached except in locally unfavourable conditions, and the
long-term human dependence on domesticated animals and plants had become locked
in.
Entanglement provides a very general idea that underpins other explanations.
Climate undoubtedly had an impact on societies in the Middle East from the Last
Glacial Maximum onwards. But how it had an impact on societies, how they reacted,
depended on the playing out of specific sets of human-thing dependence/dependency.
Populations undoubtedly increased, as did intensification, but as responses to the
demands for increased labour and more efficient production caused by the dialectic
between dependence and dependency.
It has been my aim in this paper to support the notion that Neolithicization was a
very long and slow process. It has not been my intention to explain why it was so slow,
but some consideration can be given to this question. One possible answer might be
that the process was slow because it involved genetic change in humans and plants and
animals, and genetic change is slow. Recent research has indicated that lactase persis-
tence may have become fixed in some European populations much later than has been
supposed (Gamba et al. 2014; Allentoft et al. 2015) and at least 6000 years after
domestic cattle and milking have been observed for ancestral populations in Anatolia.
Allentoft et al. (2015) find that an allele associated with light skin pigmentation in
Europeans shows a trend from low frequency to fixation in about 3000 years. These
examples demonstrate a process that is indeed very slow, and as noted earlier, genetic
changes to larger and non-shattering cereals in the Middle East can be seen to have
been stretched out over long time periods. On the other hand, it can be argued that
lactase persistence fixation may not have been selected for in the context of Neolithic
milking but in the context of more intensive agriculture in Bronze Age Europe. And I
have argued in this paper that it may have been storage methods and integration with
domestic animal exploitation that provided the selective context for non-shattering
cereals rather than the earlier sewing and harvesting. It is often difficult to identify
the specific behaviours that led to selection for particular traits. The selection may have
been relatively quick in response to the relevant context.
On the other hand, it is clear that a gradual reduction in human tooth size in the
Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic was indeed very drawn out and slow. But it is possible to
argue that this reduction was gradual not because biological change is always slow but
because the relevant context was only slowly changing. We are thus back with the
processes of bio-socio-material entanglements within which tooth size was itself
entangled. We can explain the slow crescendo of Neolithicization by reference to
human-thing entanglement. In societies in which there are few human-made artefacts,
there is little potential for things to exert dependency relations on humans. In such
societies, the amount of entanglements between humans and human-made things is
limited; humans and human-made things are little caught up in each other. The links are
fairly simple (hence such societies are often talked of as non-complex), and there are
few complex interactions between things that would draw humans down pathways that
demand change. As has long been noted, there was a lot more stuff by the end of the
Neolithic, and humans had started to make more changes to natural things (such as
plants) so that the latter became dependent on humans. As Renfrew (2001, 128) stated,
human culture became more substantive, more material. But the more important point
is that the entanglements of this increasingly human-made world always led to prob-
lems (where to get the groundstone material from, which alliances to use, how to create
the labour needed for intensive processing of plants) that needed solving. Into the
Epipalaeolithic, the amount of entanglements and the rate of change remained fairly
low. As the amount of human-thing entanglements increased, so the rate of change
increased. Initially, there was little in Childes package. It was only through time that
the connections proliferated, leading to further human responses. So the slowness was a
result of the limited entanglements that had dominated human existence since its
inception. But during the Neolithic, the amount of human-made stuff and their entan-
glements gradually increased, and the process has continued into the present day, with
increasingly more stuff and more entanglements and greater rates of change.
At the start of this article, it was noted that an alternative approach to the discussion
of human-thing relations is provided by Niche Construction Theory. In some of the
accounts of Niche Construction Theory, niche construction is largely interpreted as
modification of the environment, or ecosystem engineering. In such terms, it has a
meaning close to the term artefact, albeit largely with regard to modified landscapes.
However, rather than deriving a theoretical focus from debates about artefacts, things
Hodder
and the dependencies within intersecting operational chains, a theoretical framework is

used that largely derives from evolutionary theory. Here, the important move made in
Niche Construction Theory is that evolution can be seen as actively produced by
humans (and other animals) who change the environment and thus the selective
pressures that bear on them. The most cited example is lactase persistence, and this
has been discussed above. These approaches are not concerned with the daily speci-
ficities and complex intersecting operational sequences of material things. They do not
recognize the agency in those interactions themselves. In addition, as noted earlier, they
depend on population increase or climate change as macro-evolutionary processes, or
they make unwarranted assumptions about human drives and goals. There is no sense
in such accounts of tensions and the dialectical relations of dependence and dependen-
cy, of the interplay between opportunity and constraint within entrapments and entan-
glements. If humans deliberately enhance their environments, it is not because they just
decide to do that (Binford would have been astonished at such an appeal to human
intentionality) or because they have been forced to by unexplained increases in
population or by climate change (since there are always other ways of responding to
climate change), but because they have become caught up in particular bio-socio-
material entanglements that make specific intentions and adaptive responses possible.
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Things and the Slow Neolithic: the Middle

Journal of Archaeological Method

J Archaeol Method Theory

Things and the Slow Neolithic: the Middle Eastern

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017

Keywords Neolithic . Middle East . Entanglement . Things . Groundstone

processes of the domestication of particular species. It explains the how of the

Tying Bodies and Grinding Stones Together

harves ng dehusking consuming

wheat bea ng pestle sieving (wheat) roas ng, boiling,

feather grass hand grabbing singeing rubbing winnowing as above

nutlets of plucking or drying rubbing/ winnowing roas ng, grinding

Production and procurement

Examples of Other Things That Drew Humans Towards Settled

Discussion and Conclusion

and the dependencies within intersecting operational chains, a theoretical framework is

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